The theme of the low-life interior was developed by the brilliant but shortlived painter Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6-1638), by whom Teniers was much influenced. By the 1650s Teniers had moved away from Brouwer’s rough and satirical depiction of peasant life to a more indulgent view of his subjects. Smoking is a favourite theme of his tavern interiors, appearing in such works as Le bonnet rouge, 1644 (Byng Collection, Wrotham Park), The smoker, 1645 (Hermitage, St Petersburg), Interior with a smoker at a table, 1643 (Louvre, Paris) and Boors carousing, 1644 (Wallace Collection, London). Controversy had raged about the desirability of smoking ever since tobacco had been imported from America in the sixteenth century; even James I of England had weighed in with a pamphlet denouncing the filthy practice. Teniers sees it merely as part and parcel of tavern life: there is aesthetic beauty in the wisp of smoke which drifts from the mouth of the swaggering young man in the foreground, echoed in the smoke from his pipe, from the guttering candle and the coals of the brazier. A seventeenth century audience would have seen in the drifting smoke a reference to the transitoriness of human life. Life is short, why not enjoy it? There are hints of other pleasures: the empty jug and the beer glass gleaming in the background; the aphrodisiac shellfish and woman’s shoe (a lascivious symbol) in the right foreground. Teniers’s sophisticated urban clientele would have marvelled at his technical brilliance and smiled indulgently at his depiction of peasant life.

For a century and a half this painting was in the collection of the Wittelsbach Princes and Electors of Bavaria. It was probably acquired by Maximilian II Emanuel, Elector of Bavaria (1662-1726; reg. 1679-1704 and 1715-26) while he was Governor of the Spanish Netherlands. By 1700 it was displayed in the Residenz, Munich. In 1836 King Ludwig I of Bavaria (1786-1868; reg. 1825-1848), who transformed Munich with his patronage of the arts and building programmes, transferred the Teniers, along with much of the huge Wittelsbach Old Master collection, to the newly-constructed Alte Pinakothek. It was deaccessioned on 19th August 1938 as part of a policy to sell a number of Dutch and Flemish Old Masters to raise funds to buy seventeenth century Spanish works. It was bought by the art historian Dr Walter Bernt and remained in his family until 2003.

DAVID TENIERS THE YOUNGER Antwerp 1610 - 1690 Brussels

David Teniers the Younger was one of the most important seventeenth century Flemish painters of genre and landscape. Born in Antwerp, he first studied with his father David Teniers the Elder, and became a member of the Guild of St Luke in 1633. He married Anna Brueghel, daughter of the celebrated flower and landscape painter Jan Brueghel the Elder, in 1637. Anna’s guardian Peter Paul Rubens was a signatory to their marriage contract.

Between 1645 and 1646, Teniers was Dean of the Antwerp Guild of St Luke. In 1651, while he was at the height of his powers, Archduke Leopold Wilhelm, governor of the Spanish Netherlands, brought Teniers to Brussels as Court Painter and Curator, giving Teniers an authoritative role in building up the royal collection. From 1656-59 he was Court Painter to the new Spanish governor, Don Juan of Austria, brother of Philip IV, and retained close ties with the court for the rest of his life. In 1663 Philip IV gave Teniers permission to found the highly influential Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. His last known dated work was painted in 1683; Teniers died in Brussels in 1690.

Teniers’s early works were influenced by Adriaen Brouwer (1605/6-1638), particularly his treatment of peasant, low-life subjects and interior scenes, although he also painted landscapes, genre, portraits, religious and allegorical subjects. Later, Teniers turned increasingly to landscapes with figures; unlike his predecessors, however, he sought to convey the serenity of rural life rather than the more basic aspects of rustic realism. The works of Teniers were extremely influential on Flemish painting during his lifetime and beyond, and his paintings were avidly collected by princely connoisseurs.

The work of David Teniers the Younger is represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Hermitage, St Petersburg; the Louvre, Paris; the Prado, Madrid; the National Gallery, London and the Wallace Collection, London.